I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.

A Triptych of Shit

Posted on April 17th, 2014 by Cerberus

Kevin Williamson is hard at work on his Patrick Swayze cosplay for this year’s SeditionCon.

“Meritocracy at Work”, National Oh Y’all are Just Being Cute Now:

Some of you may be wondering where I’ve been for the last week. Well, some of it is still classified, but I can confirm as per the rumors that it did indeed involve a rocketship, the Attorney General of Vanuatu, and an entire barrel of Kinky Brand Liquor*.

But enough about me and my probable sex tape**, because the sad truth of life is that all this time off from reading the absolute worst of humanity has left me with an unhealthily healthy self esteem. Thus, the only thing to save you all from an impending horde of my Doombots is to inject myself with so much liquid crazy that I begin shitting my drawers and thinking Reagan was a decent president.

Deserving Millionaire Loadpants, National Oh Yes, I’ve Been Waiting for This Moment:Captain ‘America’

Heh heh heh.

I’ve been gleefully waiting to see the tearful reactions from conservatives to the latest Captain America movie and My Mommy Bought Me a Media Empire Goldberg sure as hell doesn’t disappoint. I’m about to drop some spoilers in this shorter so if you haven’t yet seen “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, you may just want to skip on by. On that note, see the new Captain America movie. Okay, spoilers in three, two, one…

Shorter:

The fact that I liked the explodey fun time action sequences means that a movie in which Captain America is pretty much straight up Chelsea Manning and the security state is literally nazis means that it’s secretly glibertarian and in-group approved… but… since we’re on the subject, HOW DARE HE SPEAK AGAINST THE GLORIOUS SECURITY STATE! HAIL HYDRA!

Have I mentioned that the new Captain America movie is really worth seeing? Cause it really is.

And it’s just hilarious to see all the conservatives trying to co-opt the Marvel universe movies because “popular and thus must be proof that everyone loves conservative values” having to wrestle with the Marvel shared universe stories pretty much pissing on every shibboleth of the modern right they can get their hands on.

I may be a DC girl at heart***, but if the Marvel movies keep on punching conservatives in their sad boners like this, I may very well have to burn my Oracle shrine and join the dark side of the comic book aisle.

You know, someday I want to shake Obama’s Antichristy hand, because he has really had a gift for so utterly flustering the right-wing that they’ve completely abandoned all the pretense and posing around their abhorrent beliefs.

I mean, take immigration for instance. The conservatives had this great scam going with “illegal immigration” as a dog whistle, getting people to associate brown immigrants with law-breaking, creating this bullshit justification for actual law-breaking in response to the natural inclinations of desperate people being directly affected by our direct economic exploitation of the region, and hiding the still-extant quota bullshit surrounding immigration from Latin America and East Asia.

And thanks to Obama getting them to lose their racist shit, we have them wholesale abandoning it in order to pledge their lily-white hands in service to blocking all legal immigration and acceptance of the citizenship of anyone with a melanin count higher than 4 cells.

Shorter:

Fellow conservatives, let us drop the pretense. The filthy niggers and spics won’t vote for us even if we let them immigrate all legal like for reasons that have nothing to do with our reflexive demonization of anyone brown. So let’s just ban legal immigration as well and maybe we can save our Gated Communities from total demographic collapse.

I mean, between this and the “your employer has a right to ban you from taking birth control” bullshit, conservatives seem finally on their way to making every demographic except old white guys vote in the same 99% block as black voters. And all I can say is finally.

I mean, c’mon, it’s not like they started particularly subtle to begin with.

Kevin D. “You can get more male heirs by butching up, you faggot” Williamson, National Blowjobs in the Men’s Toilet Don’t Count:The Case for a Little Sedition

Ah man, why isn’t every week a post from Kevin D. Williamson? Between him and Mona Charen, I practically have a greatest hits anthology already written. I mean, where else can you get such wonderful bits of deliberate ignorance like his belief that manlier sperm will get you more sons?

Oh right… in every conservative rag on the planet… never mind.

Shorter:

I’m not saying all conservatives should secede from the Union in violent uprising and acts of willful sedition and treason. I’m just saying that WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE all right thinking conservatives couldn’t help but do otherwise. WINK WINK. Oh c’mon, you idiots, why aren’t you rioting in the streets and doing a fascist takeover yet? Cause that’s pretty much the only way we’ll ever see the inside of a White House ever again.

Yeah, you sad little armchair fantasists. Listen, the only reason that your sad little tantrums of terrorism and fear are treated as minor is that you’ve never been stupid enough to threaten the money of the fuckers who actually run shit. If you actually tried your Red Dawn cosplay parade, you’d find yourselves on the end of the exact same Drones you cheerfully supported before you can even say “Occupy Movement”.

…

You know, all these cases of sad whines by people belatedly grasping with the fact that they can’t just scream and yell at reality to get back into the kitchen as if it was their unpaid sex slave don’t make me feel humbled at all…

It may have been too late to stop the rise of the Ego…

MWAHAHAHAHA! Flee fools, flee the iron talons of Doctor Cerberus! You shall all kneel! Ooh, no better, bring me the head of Warner Brothers so I may force him to create a Joss Whedon directed Wonder Woman movie written by Gail Simone. MWAHAHAHAHA!

*The real story is mea culpa. I’ve been doing a bunch of life rearrangey things where I’ve been moving forward on a bunch of stuff that might mean starting the process of going back for a PhD, opening up some opportunities to do some panels and maybe more publishing opportunities, and of course clawing back some time so I can hopefully devote more to the site. So yeah, haven’t forgotten about you all.

**Made you look.

***Which is getting harder and harder to be with all the ways DC Comics have been coming up to specifically alienate fans like me. I mean, I’m currently sewing up a hood for a Cassandra Cain Batgirl cosplay out of an unwanted bit of skirt and even I’m wondering if I should be dipping my leg into the Marvel side of the pool. That’s how bad it is right now.

Maybe it’s a fake shotgun, although practicing good trigger discipline even with fake weapons is still the right thing to do.

Also note, he is posing with the weapon angled upwards in a direction he is clearly not looking in. I suppose that since it is a shotgun, it’s unlikely that ammo falling from the sky will come down at dangerous velocities. But he should still at least be looking in the same direction his firearm is pointed.

Whoever idiot-boy is in that picture, he’s got his finger inside the trigger guard.

Also note, he is posing with the weapon angled upwards in a direction he is clearly not looking in. I suppose that since it is a shotgun, it’s unlikely that ammo falling from the sky will come down at dangerous velocities. But he should still at least be looking in the same direction his firearm is pointed.

uhhhhhh…proper gun safety is for OTHER people, you guys…not responsible gun owners of which surely kevin williams is…

Thanks for the spoiler warning. I’ve heard distant rumblings of unhappiness about this movie but they’re always unhappy about everything (until they decide “No wait, this is 100% conservative after all!” I guess I’ll see the movie and try to figure out what might be causing the knot in the tighty-whities this time.

Oooooooo. One of my favorite forms of recreation: multiple springboards into multiple articles where brave and intrepid souls go and find the most egregiously hateful and stupid mangoes and bring them back to the boat, and do diligent shredding of same. Thanx, Cerb.

The first paragraph was a terrific imaginative hook; much laughter in Albuquerque. By the time I reached the end of your footnotes, I knew I was going to do a Battle-O-the-Bands on this thread. From the tone and content of the post, it sounds like life is going better for the post-re-arrangey Cerb. You’re due, for sure. Now I’m going to dive into the articles.

So I finally saw the new Captain America sequel (Oh, and there are spoilers ahead in case you’re planning to see it but are even lazier than I am).

Off the bat, I enjoyed it. It moved along well. Good action, blah, blah, blah.

so, after this totally unsurprising opening, wherein jonah admits to his laziness, i was surprised at the amount of research and thought jonah put into it…then i was totes unsurprised that it’s about comic book characters…

Listen, the only reason that your sad little tantrums of terrorism and fear are treated as minor is that you’ve never been stupid enough to threaten the money of the fuckers who actually run shit. If you actually tried your Red Dawn cosplay parade, you’d find yourselves on the end of the exact same Drones you cheerfully supported before you can even say “Occupy Movement”.

This.

Though I do have a quibble. I suspect that for many, it’s more a matter of dumb luck, as opposed to actually not being stupid enough, in not actually threatening the income of the real Masters. I’m pretty sure most people are completely unaware of just how far and deep the tentacles spread.

In his mind, he is practicing good gun safety i.e. he’s holding a gun=he’s safe.

I think Helmut has it. Though bbkf’s comment (“proper gun safety is for OTHER people”) covers the slightly-more-aware.

“In Winter Soldier’s defense, it’s a comic-book movie intended for a global audience. As such it doesn’t really make arguments about anything so much as gestures that stand in for arguments.”–Goldberg

Change a few words and you’ve got a good critique of Jonah’s schtick. But let’s start in again.

“Fear is what leftists began telling us we were being peddled after 9/11 to advance the corporatist neoconservative agenda to take over the world. There was no real Islamist threat, according to this line of argument; it was ginned up to induce Fear.”–Podhoretz

Jonah likes this enough to quote it. Thinks the same thing was true of the Cold War Era left re: the communist threat. This supposed scholar of fascism limply gestures that the exploitation of paranoia and fear in these contexts is a joke not worth his time.

These two cool cats had better hope readers are too dazzled by their displays of ‘tude to inquire any further,* because the tangled truth of these matters just gets worse and worse for them the deeper you go.

*Imagine for a moment that Goldberg’s schtick is meant to work like that. To cool and self-assured to break a sweat, which’d be silly because unnecessary: what he does is more than sufficient. Think of it. He’s doing enough, he thinks, and some people agree.

So there you have it folks, the best way to represent Captain America is a comic book that failed completely to understand who Steve Rogers was and what he represents. And it’s a political best way – apparently jingoistic conservative assholes have “the moral conviction” that “more progressive characters” lack; apparently “weaponized homophobia” is the best way to fight invading aliens; and apparently “respect for authority” is “unique to Captain America and his specific origin story.”

Allow me to rebut: Abraham Riesman doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Steve Rogers isn’t a jingoistic conservative asshole and I have evidence to back that up. Unlike many other patriotic characters who derive their virtues from the American heartlands, Steve Rogers grew up in the cosmopolitan multi-cultural world of New York City…

“Fear is what leftists began telling us we were being peddled after 9/11 to advance the corporatist neoconservative agenda to take over the world. There was no real Islamist threat, according to this line of argument; it was ginned up to induce Fear.”–Podhoretz

Fear was exactly what was being sold by the tanker truck load in the wake of the world trade center attacks. It’s not that there was no threat of Islamic terrorism, it’s that the wildly exaggerated threat of Islamic terrorism was used as, among other things, the justification to engage in two entirely unnecessary wars, pursue a blatantly self interested foreign policy, defer action on actual problems, end all but the narrowest interpretations of the fourth amendment, write a blank check to the defense contractors, legalize torture and “reform” the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies and put them under the umbrella of totally new, Orwellian and unnecessary cabinet level Department of Homeland Security, which didn’t so much end interdepartmental rivalry as give it an entirely new stadium in which to play its games of paranoia and institutional empire-building and add a few more teams to the league.

And no one over the age of 12 thought the neo-cons wanted to take over the world. They couldn’t care less about ruling the rest of the world. If they ruled the world, they’d have to justify impoverishing most of it to enrich US billionaires. As it stands, they don’t even have to do that. They just want to have the world like it was in the imaginary 1950s, when the US was the unquestioned leader of the free world, with the rest of the world free for the taking for any US company to exploit.

“Hence an irony. The meaning of FDR’s We have nothing to fear but fear itself line is that we should confront our fears directly and deal with them […] But the Cold War connotation of the Fear meant something close to the opposite. It meant ignoring, not confronting what we feared because fear itself was worse than the threat.”–Goldberg

He’s through the looking glass. This stuff is too muddled to get a handle on.

Fear and paranoia distort our perceptions and memories, make reasoning difficult or impossible, and often lead to evil doings. Fear and paranoia CAN be worse than their objects. There’s little correspondence between fevered imaginings and what they are supposedly about … Goldberg doesn’t want people to take a sober, clear-eyed look at communism or radical Islam or much else. Part of the usefulness of these things as they’re constructed and imagined on the Right is that nobody is supposed to acknowledge that the vagueness and mutability. They know what’s what, and to suggest otherwise is suspicious in itself. We were a nation of anti-communists who prided ourselves on never reading a word of Marx.

To Goldberg, I think, taking a threat seriously means being a full-throated reactionary, free from doubt, uninterested figuring out where a dangerous world ends and paranoid delusions begin. Be reactionary, and you’ll have it covered — a sort of “kill them all and let god sort ’em out” approach to what’s real.

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal wrote a satirical column on Monday saying Republicans should nominate Paul for president, “Because maybe what the GOP needs is another humbling landslide defeat.

“Humbling?” I wish. I have seen no signs of humility or any other real-world/sane responses from the Right in decades. Unfortunately, it seems to have been quite successful, so far.

true…it’s every wild west fantasist’s dream! no gubmint to tell you what to do…having to depend on volunteers to get an ambulance to you in time…or the fire brigade…really, it sounds quaint! the asshat who married my mom? you all remember him, right…well, mr. keep government out of my life was at the forefront of trying to get the podunk unincorporated town he and my mom lived in in alabama incorporated…because the volunteer system was not working…in the end, it got voted down…

Republican candidate compares taxes to Holocaust? This stuff will be forgotten in 2016 when, after a resounding Democratic landslide, hundreds of articles will be written about why the GOP so consistently loses the Jewish vote.

Damn, I got out of the boat. I thought bbkf was joking when she typed:

Off the bat, I enjoyed it. It moved along well. Good action, blah, blah, blah.

Damn, damn, damn… this professional writer actually perpetrated that. Could Jonah really be rebelling against his mother by posing as a conservative “intellectual” and blowing Buckley’s money on foolishness?

Yes, the current crop of DC comics is all I hated about DC and Marvel from when I was a kid – Marvel had the trademark on ‘Superhero’ and DC was the old boy’s club but DC then had the actual characters you might actually like and so I went DC.

“Fear is what leftists began telling us we were being peddled after 9/11 to advance the corporatist neoconservative agenda to take over the world. There was no real Islamist threat, according to this line of argument; it was ginned up to induce Fear.”–Podhoretz

No, the argument wasn’t that there was no real Islamist threat, the argument was that what Bush and his little cabal of nimrods were doing had little or nothing to do with fighting that threat. Taking down a dictator who’d been fairly successful at stomping out al-Qaeda while completely ignoring the organization’s ties to Saudi or Pakistani elites wasn’t exactly calculated to fight “the Islamist threat,” torture and warrantless wiretapping have never been required tools to take down terrorist organizations, and whatever legitimate purpose Bush had in Afghanistan kind of got lost along the way somewhere in “I’m just not that concerned about [Osama Bin Laden], to be honest” territory.

Same again with their predecessors from fifty years ago. Soviet agents in the U.S. government? No fucking shit: it’s called espionage and it’s a fact of life that no one needed the Red Scare to be informed of. That President Eisenhower was one of these agents, as McCarthy alleged? Pardon me if I continue to point and laugh.

There’s a Barry Goldwater quote about AFL-CIO president Walter Reuther in which old Barry exclaimed that he considered Reuther more dangerous than Sputnik or anything else the Soviet Union could put up. That largely encapsulates the Republican approach to national security since the 1950s at least. They’re less interested in fighting communism, Islamism or what-have-you than in using war hysteria as a hammer to crush domestic political rivals whose main sin is being on the other side of the aisle. As we would see again with the fear-based agenda of RWNJs after 9/11.

Imagine someone frozen in the 1940s being dropped into the 2010s with no experience of the intervening decades. Someone still high on ’40s social norms, righteous wartime adrenaline, and super-serum. Would he be the gentle, sensitive man we see in Marvel’s films and comics? It’s certainly possible. But isn’t it more likely — and more interesting to imagine — that we would find him difficult and reactionary? That he’d be uncomfortably macho and out of touch with modern values? In other words: Wouldn’t he be more John McCain than Barack Obama?

Oddly enough, this is addressed fairly early on in the first Cap movie. Tommy Lee Jones’ character wanted one of the recruits who was a fairly major asshole to be the test subject for the super soldier serum, justifying it because, basically, you win wars by being a jerk. Erskin objected… because he’d seen the same thing done in Nazi Germany and knew exactly what happened when you took a bully and gave him superpowers.

Rest of that article: the entire section outlining exactly what a New Yorker with Steve Rogers’ background would probably be like in real life (as opposed to Riesman’s fantasy of it) is pure gold. At the end of it:

And this Steve Rogers, who’s been exposed to all of what New York City has to offer, becomes an explicit anti-fascist. In the fall of 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor, he first volunteers to join the army to fight the Nazis specifically. This isn’t an apolitical patriotism forged out of a sense that the U.S has been attacked; rather, Steve Rogers had come to believe that Nazism posed an existential threat to the America he believed in. New Deal America.”

This is something that occurred to me long ago, and before I was even really into politics, when watching other classic characters like Rick Blaine from Casablanca or Indy and his father from the Indiana Jones movies. If you were that intensely anti-fascist (to the point of risking life and limb) before the war, before they became Public Enemy # 1, before they were written into our history books as the 20th century version of the devil… then unless you had an ethnic tie to one of their victims (Jew, Slav, Gypsy), you were probably a left-winger and a fairly committed one at that.

(On a related topic, one of the nicer moments in the fairly shitty Crystal Skull movie was Indy getting blacklisted by the FBI. Great show during the war, son. Now welcome to the fifties).

If you were that intensely anti-fascist (to the point of risking life and limb) before the war, before they became Public Enemy # 1, before they were written into our history books as the 20th century version of the devil… then unless you had an ethnic tie to one of their victims (Jew, Slav, Gypsy), you were probably a left-winger and a fairly committed one at that.

I forget which Republican it was who didn’t want a memorial to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade because “they were against fascism too early”.

When he came to Washington as a senator in 1952, Edwards relates, Jay Gordon Hall, General Motors chief lobbyist in Washington, took Goldwater under his wing, even writing speeches for him. Under Hall’s guidance, Goldwater, a member of the Senator Labor Committee, led an eight-year crusade against Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers, even though the UAW was hardly a factor in Arizona politics. Goldwater was following Hall’s script.

During most of Goldwater’s career, he did and said what others told him to. Arizonan Stephen Shadegg agreed to run his first Senate campaign in 1952 on the condition that Goldwater not make impromptu speeches or statements and not take positions that he and Shadegg had not reached agreement on. During the next decades in office, when Goldwater was given the chance to speak off-the-cuff, he displayed a thoughtless bluster more appropriate to a bar stool than a political podium. In 1958, when his prepared radio text ran short, he ad libbed that Reuther was a “more dangerous menace than the Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do to America.” During the 1964 campaign, he advocated “one change” in social security, making it “voluntary” for individuals, as if one could maintain an insurance system on this basis. He proclaimed American missiles “undependable” and then added, “I can’t tell you — it’s classified.” He called for taking the Vietnam war to South China. “It would be fairly easy,” he declared at a press conference. These statements were not lapses, but revealed that Goldwater did not have the capacity for judgment or reflection required of a president.

The other captain was given a serum that made him a “super soldier,” enhancing all of his functions to the peak of human ability. Captain ‘Merica is known to drink other people’s “wounded soldiers” (unfinished beers), which has given him a superhuman tolerance for Busch Lite.

They won’t nominate Rand Paul, and I don’t think Cruz either, because neither one of them is electable.

This is the bagger proving test – the Puddles’ big moneymen I think would be reluctant to have either of these two possibly uncontrollable wastrels in the position of party representative, Cruz might allow the moneymen whatever they want as long as they tithe eleventy-jillion percent to Pappa Cruz, Paul might actually walk his libertarian walk and shut down those oh-so-profitable foreign adventures. Neither case is likely, but possible.

The Taint Party wants Cruz more than Paul, but Paul would probably be acceptable.

The Pub Syndicate would prefer maybe:
– Rubio, a completely blank slate, no original opinions or words, easily led around by the nose. The Treason Partiers find him a little, umm, off-putting, not sure why.
– Lil’ Scooter Walker, the Mighty Rodentiaphile, corrupt to the core, eagerly wants to see people suffer, the thought of pools of blood of the poor make him ejaculate. The TP would quibble only with the fact that, at least on paper, Walkies has yet to endorse Wisconsin’s secession from the nation.
– Ben Carson. A real, r-e-e-a-a-a-l-l bad person. Can speak the language of the evangelical, can speak the language of business. He can’t pass tea party muster at all, but I expect him to get a big money push as he could be really competitive in a general election.

The Teeps might in the end solidify behind a Walker candidacy, but his general hopes are slim. Carson might be good in the general but his primary hopes are slim. Who gets out their people, the Teeps or the moneymen, tis the query.

Probably a load of pants, and poorly stated as well, but my two cents.

The Teeps might in the end solidify behind a Walker candidacy, but his general hopes are slim.

I am finding this unlikely. Not only does he need to avoid relocating to the House Of Many Doors, he needs to tap-dance his way through the Secession Conference (The Peril Of Rick Perry) but also has to finesse his recent inability to promise to fulfill his next term, if re-elected (the PalinDrome Dillema)

And if he manages both of THOSE high wire acts, he will need to fend off opposition efforts by savage troglodytes like Christie and Rand Paul. His bacground of penny-ante corruption and meaningless lies, his third-rate intellect, and goofy face will all be put on display, and he is far from national material. Yeah, I know none of those things will disqualify him in the eyes of the wingnut Base, but it will also put him on display for the normals in the country as well, and he does not react well at all to scrutiny.

Paleo’s rundown of the major party factions is probably not far off the mark, but the Big Money Kochsuckers don’t have many options this year; it’s so bad that it seems they are floating Mitt into the rodeo again.

OK, now seriously, no biasing.
Assuming there is no major Govt scandal before then, and assuming that HRC is the Dem candidate, can any of these guys beat her in the general election 2016?
Seriously ?

oh jeepers, suez…didn’t you hear that hills IS going to run and she is going to WIN because we are ALL voting for her…yes, every single commentor here is voting for her, or so we’ve been told…that means you, so pack your suitcase, sister…you’re coming to ‘murica!!!

Okay, off topic, but polling required – how far should one be expected to drive to see their favorite band because the dumbass mofos ain’tn’t coming to the Twin Cities (as of yet). I mean, I’m going regardless because they can’t have too many tours left in them, but its a 6 hour turn-around and I am old and cranky, yet devastatingly dashing.

Assuming there is no major Govt scandal before then, and assuming that HRC is the Dem candidate, can any of these guys beat her in the general election 2016?

’16 is too far away to judge that right now. Like it or not, what candidates do during a campaign has far less to do with the election results than the old standards–the economy and general mood of the country.

I will say this–a snarky, snotty little shitstain like Ted Cruz cannot beat her. He’d do worse than Romney did because he just can’t shut his condescending punkass fat mouth. Rand Paul is just too fucking crazy and weird (think right wing Ralph Nader), and Scott Walker has a chance, but I don’t think he can handle it. Someone mentioned up-thread that he’s an incoherent babbler who sounds like an idiot, but don’t forget we elected one of those TWICE. Even after he started 2 wars we had no business fighting. Being a union busting asshole with all those cutesy stories about bootstraps and choosing to be born in to a rich white family instead of being lazy gives him quite a chance, even among middle-of-the-road voters.

I personally hate Clinton’s guts. I couldn’t stand her husband–he was a lightweight and a dope and a Republican. He laid the groundwork for the Obama presidency by legitimizing crazy assholes like Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert. I’m still mad at her for being in full support of Bush on Iraq–until it wasn’t popular anymore. Unfortunately, she might be all we have this time around.

But what great timing! I mean, purely accidental, purely an act of nature, purely just left up to God, and God answered Hillary Clinton’s prayers, and she’s going to have the prop of being a new grandma while she runs for president.”

Teh FSM has a wonderful sense of humor, yes. May the sauce be with her.

But what great timing! I mean, purely accidental, purely an act of nature, purely just left up to God, and God answered Hillary Clinton’s prayers, and she’s going to have the prop of being a new grandma while she runs for president.”

tsam, I agree, and I’m not particularly a fan. But she will be marginally better than Jeb/Scooter/Mittens (hell yes he’s running – I got $20, who wants this action), and a Hillzer win will make Fox News Plaza look like the aftermath of Heaven’s Gate.

I would so like it if Suezboo would visit Albuquerque. We have purdy mountains(*) overlooking the town, and the Rio Grande running through it … and we could sit in the cottonwoods or willows down by the river.

Also: Applause for Helmut, Chris, and CRA for their articulate comments up-thread.

I got pulled away from Ville du Sadlie for some busy-ness. I haven’t even started on the BOtB yet. With 100+ comments to cull, I better get started pronto.

(*) The Sandia Mountains. ‘Sandia’ is the Spanish word for ‘watermelon’; the mountains have a distinctive pink / red glow in the setting sun. From my balcony, I have a nice view of Sandia Crest (10,800+), the highest part of the chain.

Actually, I think she’d be quite a bit better than them. I think she’s learned her lesson about the stupid wars–especially after being Secretary of State. But she’s old enough to remember Vietnam, and she should have realized that she was pushing all the same bullshit arguments for Iraq that Johnson and Nixon sold for Vietnam (and Kennedy, to a lesser extent). Bobby Kennedy promised to end it the day he got elected. He knew back in ’68 that it was nothing more than a fucking meat grinder. I don’t want somebody who learns the lessons the hard way. I want a cool head that knows what the consequences of foreign invasions are and doesn’t make the mistake in the first place.

I’m with you, but I will say that this “marginally” is also what was said about Obama — and 8 years later, we have Bush’s wars wound down, the greatest expansion to the social safety net in decades, and unprecedented expansion of civil rights for the ghey. Although I will concede many places where there was plenty of lack of progressive …umm, progress… that margin is pretty damn big.

And I will say that I think Clinton, being a politician, will take some advantage of the slack that has been provided by those margins; perhaps to push the hell back on the War on Women.

Suezboo: Bernie is an Independent; he will not run with Clinton. Plus Bernie is a (gasp!) self-declared socialist. The Democratic wing of the Corporate Party could never accept that.

By the way, NOT all of the Sadlies will be voting for Clinton. I certainly won’t, and–from comments–I know there are others here that despise her nearly as much as I do. For the third election in a row, I’m going to write in Bernie Sanders.

Clinton will be probably be the next President. I wonder what the current book is in Vegas and London….

—————–

Thanks to all the volunteer Public Works crew for their prompt work in this thread (and in the last two threads also). I’ve encountered also NO drool at all !

I would so like it if Suezboo would visit Albuquerque. We have purdy mountains(*) overlooking the town, and the Rio Grande running through it … and we could sit in the cottonwoods or willows down by the river.

Clinton will be probably be the next President. I wonder what the current book is in Vegas and London….

Since it will not be Warren or Sanders or Feingold, and she will stomp on the Republican shrimps, I can live with that. We can keep on this work of moving that damn Overton Window back to its proper location.

Fenwick : Yes, I agree, your personal mountains are lovely, but I contend that my actual town is way prettier. Also in a valley surrounded by lovely mountains. Come visit !
Can’t do links. Google Images : Tulbagh. Please check out where I live.

Thanks, Pup. This is why I chose to retire here from the Big City.
Oh, re wrong side driving: a) Blame the Feelthy English Imperialist Swine and b) we also do metric – problem? and c) cricket and rugby and soccer.

And I will say that I think Clinton, being a politician, will take some advantage of the slack that has been provided by those margins; perhaps to push the hell back on the War on Women.

That would be nice. Obama should have told everyone who didn’t like the contraceptive mandate to FUCK OFF AND EAT SHIT AND GO TO HELL AND DIE if they don’t like it. Also, he could have explained what religious freedom actually is, instead of letting Hobby Lobby and other droolcup motherfuckers control the narrative. This is what I hate about Obama most. He gets opposition from insane assholes, he looks for a compromise instead of verbally beating their asses down. He has the skills to do it, he just doesn’t want to.

Obama should have told everyone who didn’t like the contraceptive mandate to FUCK OFF AND EAT SHIT AND GO TO HELL AND DIE if they don’t like it. Also, he could have explained what religious freedom actually is, instead of letting Hobby Lobby and other droolcup motherfuckers control the narrative.

Yeah, should have. If he had been someone entirely different, and been the dream liberal candidate, instead of the candidate we had that was able to get elected. And the Hobby Lobby thing would STILL have wound up in the SC.

But, when magic happens, that candidate will also deliver to me a motorcycle of my choice, as well as magical six-pack of abs.

I got out of the simulator at 3:00 this afternoon. Unfortunately the jumpseat to Rickenbacker (where my car is parked) doesn’t show until 2:30 AM.

My other options were try to hitch a ride on United via O’Hare or US Airways via DC.

This seemed pretty dicey on a Friday afternoon and I didn’t want to get stuck at O’Hare or DCA. Offline jumpseaters are lowest priority and I could get bumped to make room for revenue passengers or a United/US Air pilot.

Even if I got home I’d be at Port Columbus instead of Rickenbacker, which is 20 miles away ($50 cab ride).

Long story short I decided to go with the sure thing and I’ve been sitting around all evening waiting for 2:30 AM to roll around.

oh for feck’s sake…i was trying to tell suezboo that she is the shit and also make another comment, but apparently the vodka has rendered me helpless against the vodka…also, too…hillary: meh and omg..christians were def harshing my mellow tonight…

well, at least i didn’t drunkbook anybody last night…re: obama…yeah, i’m not sure why the verbal smackdowns don’t happen. it’s not like he’s got re-election to worry about and it’s not like he could possibly piss any more wingnuts off any more than they are…he’s basically got nothing to lose…and i think it would be cathartic…

okay, so we have these two couples come in: one is from mound, mn and makes a shit ton of money selling atificial joints…they built a hunting ‘shack’ out here which includes a shower for their dogs, a room with heated floors and whatnot to dry out their hunting clothes, a wine cellar, geo-thermal heating system, tahitian teakwood deck, and custom handcrafted cupboards, mantles, woodwork, etc. the other couple is their ‘neighbor’…rich white farmer…so, they proceed to get hammered (city guy brings his own wine) and of course they start talking about church…farmer is just miserable because his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephs don’t go to church every sunday…he’s pushing sixt and he feels like he has let his parents down because he’s the ‘superior’ of the family and he should be able to behoove them to go to church…whatever. city boy starts talking about how great their maundy thursday service was and how the pastor pointed out that when the ‘guys’ screwed up in planning ‘the big dinner’ jesus didn’t point it out to them and bitch about it…he just started washing feet. he then literally starts talking about this ‘bitch’ that goes to their church who he calls ‘debbie downer’ who at a funeral complained about something one of the other members did to the parking lot. he then said, and i quote: ‘i wanted to punch that fucking bitch and knock her to the ground.’ i told them that people like that (also including him) were the reason i haven’t gone to church in years and don’t plan on it any time soon. they were scandalized and ‘zomg! you NEED to go to church!’ and i’m like, ‘no, i don’t’ and they were like, ‘well enjoy going to hell’. i pointed out that jesus never went to church and never read the bible and everyone calls him a christian. that gave them a bit of pause. a bit later, farmer tells a racist joke using the n word…his wife was like, ‘wtf? just a second ago you were talking about church and now you’re telling that joke?’ but in a classy way. i also piped up with a wtf? his reply was, ‘hey, i have to listen to german jokes all the time…it’s just jokes, just people having fun! people shouldn’t get so upset!’…then we had some bitching about obama and the government, etc. etc. then city boy brings up how crappy the workmanship of his house was…totally trashes the carpenter and his wife who are really cool people. and they were even like, ‘omg! she’s so fat i don’t know how she can even walk!’ i mumbled a ‘wwjd’ and rolled my eyes.
i could not wait for them to leave. i used to halfways enjoy easter, but hearing about it all fucking week, trying to work when most of the town is shut down for easter services (our clinic actually closes for the weekend at noon on good friday) is just making me wish it was over already….

so, the son texts me this morning and tells me that he got a complaint from a customer yesterday over a joke he made. he actually made the joke in the break room and his workmates found it hilarious and passed it around and the customer somehow heard it…he said he took the blame because he wanted credit for the joke even though the customer didn’t hear him say it. customer didn’t do anything at the time, but called the shop a couple of hours later and asked for his manager. so, i asked him what was the joke? he said it was that they supply planned parenthood (right across the street from his workplace–a big ol’ protest was going on at the time) with commercial grade garbage disposals (he works for a plumbing supply place and their customer base is a lot of contractors)…he is a chip off the old block 🙂

yeah, so i gotta go…my grand-nephew who is the cutest babby ever is in town and i have to go fulfill my maternal yearnings even though i’m a feminist and we totes don’t like babbies…so, sorry for the troll poop that is going to be fouling the place…

bbfk, it isn’t uncommon for people with two or more cultural backgrounds to attempt to be a bridge or reconciler for those cultures. He was very successful at it when he was a community organizer, and he also has to be careful not to invoke the specter of the “angry blah man” when dealing with his opponents.

I don’t think he needs to get angry, he needs to get creative at trolling the Republicans, like making a remark about expecting another attempt to abolish Obamacare, or bringing up some of the stupid remarks some of the 0.1% have made recently, like there will be no Kristallnacht of their class on his watch.

VCarl: Thanks for the Scalzi link. Thought-provoking essay. I found it valuable … and certainly applicable to myself.

With regard to the drool: Throughout my life, I’ve worked hard to patrol my sexism, racism, and homophobia. That I admit I still have vestigial bigotry is quite different than the reichwing’s shrill and vicious dog-whistles. They are NOT equivalent; the charge of ‘hypocrisy’ is mendacious.

There is a 1976 patent from General Food (expired in 1991) for a variety of particulate dextrin which can bind its own weight of grain alcohol, and can then be dissolved in water for those occasions when you want an alcohol / sugar cocktail.
patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US3956511.pdf

When I moved to Baltimore, I lived in a heavily Polish / Ukrainian neighborhood. There was tiny Russian / Ukrainian church–with services in those languages–catty-corner from my rowhouse. (Now the old neighborhood has been re-habbed by affluent young people; the churchgoers–mostly elderly–came from the suburbs.) Anyway, I discovered the marvelous art of Ukrainian easter eggs.

So Happy Easter for believers … and I hope everyone enjoys this unusual art form.

Myself? Well, tomorrow is also 4 / 20. Always a good day to celebrate. I’m going over to my brother’s for a big family / relatives dinner. But I will be back home by 4:20.

I like the marvelously intricate geometry and coloration in the Ukrainian eggs.

For the same reason, I enjoy Islamic art. Portrayal of humans and and/or animals is forbidden–an extension of the Prophet’s iconoclasm. So Islamic decoration developed along three main lines: (1) calligraphic inscriptions (of verses in the Qu’ran); (2) geometeric patterns; (3) foliate patterns … or combinations of these.

The whole universe seemed to be throbbing in deep, regular pulsations that filled every corner of space and flowed through my body and mind alike. I lost all sense of equilibrium and staggered dizzily, nor did it change things in the least when I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my hands. However, my mind was still clear, and in a very few minutes I realized what had happened.

I had encountered at last one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very closely – the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves, and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous, dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make of mask.

Recalling what happened to Bailey three years ago, I fell into a momentary panic, and began to dash and stagger about in the crazy, chaotic world which the plant’s exhalations had woven around me. Then good sense came back, and I realized all I need do was retreat from the dangerous blossoms – heading away from the source of the pulsations, and cutting a path blindly – regardless of what might seem to swirl around me – until safely out of the plant’s effective radius.

Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant’s pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour.

As long as the kids believe in the Easter Bunny, they’re playing with Satan’s testicles whether or not I believe in God. Easter in a nutshell. One day a year to boil a fallen angel’s innumerable nuts, hide ’em, yadda yadda, peel and eat.

F, you old stoner, did you know cannabis (“dagga”) is indigenous to the Western Cape? The people were high when the Europeans arrived – probably why they didn’t take them seriously at first.
Working on your visa, right?

I hate seeing baseball played on artificial turf. Of the 30 teams in MLB, only two clubs–Tampa Bay and Leafs Suck (both in the AL-East)–still use an artificial surface. My favorite quote (*) about artificial grass came from legendary reliever Tug McGraw. A broadcaster asked what he though of artificial grass, and McGraw replied, “I don’t know. I’ve never smoked it.”

(*) In his documentary Baseball, Ken Burns uses this quote in the introduction to the 1970’s.

That Scalzi link was most excellent. You can always rely on him for something intelligent in that vein – and his novels aren’t bad either.

Gotta love the guy who gave us schadenfreude pie. I was in a bookstore a couple of weeks ago and I took a long look at Redshirts before deciding to buy the recently released Penguin Classics collection of Clark Ashton Smith’s short stories and poetry. I’ll buy Redshirts on my next go-round.

one of my donors makes some beatiful ones…every time i would visit her dad, he would take them out and we would look at them…a good memory…

As long as the kids believe in the Easter Bunny, they’re playing with Satan’s testicles whether or not I believe in God. Easter in a nutshell. One day a year to boil a fallen angel’s innumerable nuts, hide ‘em, yadda yadda, peel and eat.

for about a good three years running back when the kids were wee tots, i completely forgot about easter baskets until sunday morning…then hubbkf would have to distract them while i went out and smuggled in the candy that i hid in the car trunk…the trickiest part was trying to hide them…

Working on your visa, right?

fenwick, you’d best get your ass down to s.a…pronto…suezboo is one sadly i really, really would love to meet 🙂

i’ve got a pasta recipe at home…found it, was sooooooo excited to make it and then we got exactly ZERO morels last spring…fingers are crossed for a bumper crop this year…also, hubbkf has found a nice big patch of arglespargle stuff…

Saute them in butter with diced shallot and minced garlic, and some fresh thyme. Toss a 1/2 cup dry white wine (I use French vermouth for all such) and some asparagus or peas. Reduce then add a judicious glug of cream. Let it reduces bit then add your _almost cooked_ pasta, toss it all good for a minute or two then adjust sauce consistency with the reserved pasta cooking water.

Major, a pound if morels might get you killed in these parts. Given that I have reeceived excellent advice fom you regarding the potatoes under the roasted chicken, I figure that butter, garlic, a touch of salt pepper and mayhaps olive oil will serve.

I enjoyed it. Wanted to avoid hyperbole. Twas a fine specimen of a type of rock music. Quite spirited and tight. The guitarist has strengths that I lack, and I appreciate that. I’m not too impressed with his vocals, but this is grass roots, punk stuff; if he can write those songs and sing and play them at the same time he’s doing real well in my book.

I couldn’t hear the bass very well, but that’s to be expected.

I haven’t played a club gig in many years but I remember what it’s like and I dig what you’re doing.

As always with food, proceed as the pup describes…Shakes fist norwesterly for making my mouth water, when i have nothing in the larder…

I’m contemplating running to the local Chinese restaurant for some fried chicken gizzards. My principal workplace is in a town with a large Latino population, so gizzards are on the menu, just like they are at the Chinese restaurant near my former workplace in the South Bronx. I’ve never seen gizzards on the menu in neighborhoods without a big Latin population.

When I was the administrator of a Children’s Home, the cooks made chicken necks every week because they were really cheap. I made them replace the necks with real chicken because our lil sweethearts deserve better, right?
Within a week, I had a deputation from the kids demanding the return of their beloved chicken necks. Sigh. Different strokes, all righty.

When I was the administrator of a Children’s Home, the cooks made chicken necks every week because they were really cheap. I made them replace the necks with real chicken because our lil sweethearts deserve better, right?

One of my uncles almost had a mutiny on his hands when, in the course of a vacation at the family’s cabin, he bought a shitton of chicken necks at ten cents a pound. He was saved because an old family friend (I met him at a spry 92- he knew my grandfather as a mischievous youth) made a superb risotto to accompany it. Sadly, he couldn’t find saffron in the back o’ beyond (deep in Maine’s Kennebec Valley), but we made do.

that is my mil’s favorite! she always gets the neck…personally, i would not dream of eating one…but, yes…different strokes…

I’m a heart and gizzard man. One of my all-time favorite things ever is chicken hearts, dusted with spices and grilled on skewers. Luckily, I can buy chicken hearts by the pound at a supermarket near the job.

Once again, the right-wing demonstrates that it doesn’t even have a hive-mind, it only has a hive-ass out of which it pulls bullshit talking points.

If they weren’t all chasing the same money from about 10 major donors (and their limitless number of cats-paw political action groups) they wouldn’t be singing in harmony. If the Republicans had to raise all of their election money from their own district, you might see some variety in their stated positions. But they are all chasing the Sheldon Adelson/Koch Brothers/Walton family cash and their wingnut-libertarian positions are well known, so anyone with national ambitions tailors their message to their real audience, the big money. And if that means outright plagiarism from others doing the same thing, well it’s not like the big donors are all that interested in funding intellectual honesty and integrity.

I was surprised to see polenta in that list … it isn’t generally pricey, regardless of whatever Mario Batalli charges for it … I like those sausage-shaped tubes for cutting into disks and frying a bit.

Polenta was a staple of Northern Italian home cooking. Like my grandfather, I always keep cornmeal in the house- when you’ve got cornmeal, you’ve got food. “Tuscan” cuisine (loosely defined) became very trendy about two decades ago, leaving us contadini very perplexed.

Malamud’s “The Jewbird” story reminded me of the documentary I just started watching last night on Netflix — “When Jews Were Funny.” So far, so good. It made me feel Jewish, more on account of my travails and sensibilities than my blood (1/16th doesn’t count for much).

brannon has his defenders and they are just as smurt, if not smurter than he:

Maybe, if all of you who contributed to Buzzfeed and those who read it actually understood the Constitution and what the founding of our country actually meant, you’d see that he makes some really great points.
But yet again, it seems our nation’s education system has failed you.

When I was in junior high, a friend and I did a series of comic book horror-comedy featurettes based on school food. Attack of the Killer Peas, Man-Eating Meatloaf, and such. Sadly, lost to the Dustbin of History, although I can still sketch up a killer pea or a meatloaf attack when necessary.

I did not see my friend’s name in the credits to Attack Of The Killer Tomoatoes, and in the absence of our original material, a copyright suit was DOA. There were too many points of similarity, though. Except for the presence of Jack Riley, which was a stroke of genius (and borderline fraud).

I lost my glasses about a week ago. Now I have bruises on my legs from tripping on the steps. I fell down twice and hit my head on something, I couldn’t see what. My lips and the area around my mouth are covered in little stab wounds from the fork. Iris helps me with my coffee so I don’t burn myself. We’ve looked everywhere, well, Iris has looked everywhere for my glasses; I’ve only crawled around feeling for them. A bug bit me on my hand when I was feeling under the dresser. My hand swelled up; I can feel that. I can follow light, but it’s hard to know which light it is. See, I lost my glasses just as Semana Santa began, so no place to get a new pair, and besides, new glasses take two weeks here. For the last couple of days I’ve closed my eyes so everything is just black; it’s so frustrating to try and see. I have a blindfold on now; it helps with the headache. Iris places my index fingers on the f and j so I can type.They say when you go blind your sense of hearing makes up the difference. That may be, I can’t say. Maybe you have to be blind for a long time for that to happen. Say hello Iris. Iris: Buenas noches! Mi pobrecito amor ha perdido sus lentes y ahora nada ve….Ojala encomtremos los lentes! Adios los Sadly Nos!

Well, the problem started with the damn terremotos. Iris was outside hanging up some clothes and I heard her scream at the same moment I felt the house move, really move, like several feet from side to side. If you’ve been in an earthquake you know how solid things become liquid, nauseating. I was trying to get out of the house and I saw Iris on the ground outside so I sort of panicked and that was when I lost my glasses. I slipped and fell, got a little bump en mi cranio. You would think that since I lost them in the house that it would be a simple task of just finding them. They’re big, two shiny lenses and a wrap of wire and all…but no. They’re gone. Too weird. Also, stupid because I don’t have a second pair. If you wear glasses, get a second pair, even if it’s just keeping the old one around in a safe place that two people know about, including yourself. I’m thinking they shot out the door and a pijul (crow kinda bird) grabbed them.

Just a last post in re the original topic – the LGM article links to another article on the Cap comics, which includes this:

when it came time to bring Steve Rogers into the Avengers, Joss Whedon describes that “One of the best scenes that I wrote [for the Avengers] was the beautiful and poignant scene between Steve and Peggy [Carter] that takes place in the present,” in which Captain America “talks about the loss of the social safety net that existed in his time, including the need for affordable healthcare for everyone.”[11] It’s good to know that Joss Whedon was thinking about “a sense of loss about what’s happening in our culture, loss of the idea of community, loss of health care and welfare and all sorts of things,” but it really is a shame that the element of Steve Rogers that most challenges modern America with the question of whether we’ve lived up to the ideals of the “Greatest Generation” was left on the cutting room floor.